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Whole Roots Or Piece Roots

Categories: Fruit Growing

For commercial apple orchards which is preferable, trees grafted on

piece roots or on whole roots? On behalf of the piece-root trees it is

claimed they sprout up less around the tree. On the other hand, it is

claimed they never make a vigorous tree. What is the truth?



Value depends rather upon what sort of a growth the tree makes afterward

than upon what it starts upon. Theoretically perhaps a whole-root tree

may be demonstrated to be better; practically, we cannot see that it

becomes so necessarily, because we have trees planted at a time when the

root graft on a piece was the general rule in propagation. After all, is

it not more important to have soil conditions and culture of such

character that a great root can grow in the orchard than to have a whole

nursery concentrated in the root of the yearling tree? As for the claim

that a root graft on a piece-root never makes a vigorous tree, we know

that is nonsense.



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